Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

Information and testimony presented by a party in a civil or criminal action that permit conclusions that indirectly establish the existence or nonexistence of a fact or event that the party seeks to prove.

Circumstantial Evidence is also known as indirect evidence. It is distinguished from direct evidence, which, if believed, proves the existence of a particular fact without any inference or presumption required. Circumstantial evidence relates to a series of facts other than the particular fact sought to be proved. The party offering circumstantial evidence argues that this series of facts, by reason and experience, is so closely associated with the fact to be proved that the fact to be proved may be inferred simply from the existence of the circumstantial evidence.

You will really make me go and buy new speaker cables. You are doing a good job at that.

andy2,

You will really make me go and buy new speaker cables. You are doing a good job at that.

no2headphones,

My curiosity about DACs was actually limited to chips. I first tried just DAC and it brought me to much more but most were regarding DACs as a stand-alone machines or other, basically finished, products.

I have no idea how chips work and consider those who can design them very bright and admire their work. I found out that most threads that somehow talk about DAC chips have 10-20-30 posts. Maybe more, I really did not dig too deep, but far less than threads about cables. Not much discussion about comparison and other details and properties of DAC chips.

So I thought, on one side we have an item that is advanced in execution and that cannot be replaced by just about anything. Not many talk about it on Audiogon (some other websites are more active in that regard, though). On the other side we have an item that can, relatively functionally, be replaced by pretty much anything that conducts electricity and there are a few threads regarding it right now and they have hundreds of posts each. We get all technical and scientific about much simpler item barely mentioning the sophisticated one that does heavy work. I have a feeling that nobody who can figure out the way to improve DAC chips ever visits these threads. Who knows, they may be too busy improving a little piece which will enable us to differentiate between burned-in and not-burned-in cable in the future.

This would be kind of thread I was looking for to compare with cable threads. See how many and when. Yet, you will see threads about tweaks consisting of howling at the moon or bringing African plants into the room going much stronger.

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/grounding-dac-chip-tweak?highlight=dac%2Bchip

ganainm,

It was not a threat at all. Far from that. It is that on some of these threads people interact with others in a way they would never do in real life. There have been calls for death, suggestions of suicides, etc. Morons, trolls, you name it. I thought that keeping conversation in the way you would at the bar would be somehow acceptable. That is where 6'5" comes from. You do not start insulting a person just because he has a different opinion. At least you keep mind open. "You" not being you personally, but any of us.

I might have misunderstood that article, but so would
anyone reading it who was not deeply familiar with
what you mentioned. To us, it simply says
"no matter how hard you try, you are not going
to get there".

First, we show that better stranded conductor
design, even with “both hands
behind our back”, as I call the constraints of
a stranded parallel cable, is still an arena in
which considerable improvement is possible,
and with less than half as much metal for less
than half the price.
Then, we use a cable of identical design,
except with solid conductors—a fun process
that usually provokes at least one mumbled
comment to the effect that, “if it’s that
obvious, how come everyone doesn’t do it?”
Good question.
Next, using the exact same solid conductors,
we share the audible performance difference
between parallel and twisted-geometry
cables, where geometry changes alone
can yield a surprisingly more open and
subjectively more dynamic presentation.
Going further, we move to a cable of
identical design, but with higher quality
copper conductors, and once again, the
clear sonic difference has a clear causeand-
effect.
Last in this progression is another pair of the
same better-metal cables, except with our
Dielectric-Bias System (DBS) attached. We
use identical cables except for the DBS—a
controlled experiment with a single variable
in-play: namely, the amount of interference
caused by the insulation, the dielectric.
Directionality is our honorary fifth element
or ingredient, although because it is a factor
always in play with any cable, and not part
of any particular design hierarchy, it doesn’t
quite fit in the same category as the others.
All drawn metal has a directional impedance
variation at higher RF/EMI noise frequencies.
By ‘law’, energy must follow the path of least
resistance, so we employ this impedance
variation as a mechanism for consciously
directing noise either to Earth or to
whichever attached circuit is less vulnerable
to noise. The key is to direct noise to where it
will do the least damage.

"Cable Vendor Claim
"'Breaking in' a cable has everything to do with the insulation - not the wire itself. The insulation (or dielectric) will absorb energy from the conductor when a current is flowing (i.e. when music is playing). This energy-absorption causes the dielectric's molecules to re-arrange themselves from a random order into a uniform order. When the molecules have been rearranged, the dielectric will absorb less energy & consequently cause less distortion." - Audioquest

Thus their conclusion is the dielectric , not the wire causes distortion! Claims regarding insulation molecules "aligning" with a signal, skin effect, strand jumping, etc, are anecdotal at best. Let's not forget that an audio signal is AC, and effectively random from a physical perspective. Nothing can align to a random signal by being anything other than random - exactly the state they claim is "cured" by injecting a signal.

"Break In" is not a proven audible or measurable phenomenon. The perception of changes in sound quality with time is likely attributable to the classical placebo effect, i.e., a listener anticipating a possible audible difference is predisposed to hear one whether or not it exists. Note that Audioquest isn't the only exotic cable vendor that claims cables "Break In". This is actually quite a popular myth touted by many other exotic cable vendors and cable forum cult hobbyists alike."

I have a feeling that almost nobody here is related to any manufacturer. Save for one or two who actually do not try to hide that fact. They do not flaunt it, but they do not pretend they have no connection to the manufacturing side.

"I would think people buy cables for the sound quality. I don’t think they care about burn in."

Just this thread has 17 pages. At least half is our non-sense arguing about something else but actual question, but still. Eight pages, 400 posts or so, are arguing about existence of burn-in.

andy2,

I might have misunderstood that article, but so would anyone reading it who was not deeply familiar with what you mentioned. To us, it simply says "no matter how hard you try, you are not going to get there".

andy2,

You are right but, from some marketing perspective, creating a story around a subject is desirable, too. Adding some sort of mystique is probably always positive in marketing terms. Expensive cables, whatever "expensive" is at that moment, are not aimed for majority of people. Majority would agree with your statements. Fancy cables are aiming at small group with its own ideas and personalities. Just read how stubborn both sides on cable threads are. That group needs more of a story than just "it is great". Call it a "marketing psychology" or something like that. Make it seem like they have to work for it. Restaurants with long waiting lists (weeks and so on) have been using that kind of approach for the longest time.

It is not to say that burn-in does or does not exist. It is just why it would be a good thing for a manufacturer to talk about it. Not to mention that, in case cable does not sound phenomenal, they can always say "they need a really long break-in, months".

Did the marketing guy at Audioquest get fired after this?

For an undecided prospective customer, this says "don't bother buying something expensive".

This false theory is nothing more than Marketing Mumbo Jumbo created by Dishonorable people to sell crap (Overkill Speaker Cables) to unsuspecting, uneducated victims!

"For many music lovers, this means that they are almost never hearing their cables in their optimum state.”

Did the marketing guy at Audioquest get fired after this?

For an undecided prospective customer, this says "don't bother buying something expensive".

This thread, and many similar ones, is only for decadent entertainment. What else could it be? Threads about cables get lots of action with ideas and opinions how to do things in some way being expressed quite energetically.

I was puzzled so I checked (just a quick search on Audiogon forums) how are the threads about improving DAC chips doing. Those little things that do the actual work in many, if not most, of our systems. Well, it does not seem that many people are interested in discussing that. DAC chips seem to be some orphan while cables are the favorite child.

I guess that talking about chip design, or whatever else regarding its function, requires a bit more actual knowledge and engineering skills than being bold while talking about wires, regardless of the side you are on.